A new Sherlock Holmes novel — the first officially endorsed by the estate of original author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — is coming to book shelves soon, announced Orion Publishing House.

Written by children’s author Anthony Horowitz, who is known for his past work on the book series about teenage spy Alex Rider, the new novel will be true to the original material as much as possible.

“My Holmes is going to be exactly the Holmes of the (original) novels without any new information on my part,” Horowitz said in an interview with BBC. “I don’t want to take any liberties with this great iconic figure.”

Having grown up reading the Sherlock Holmes novels, Horowitz said he couldn’t resist the opportunity to write a brand new adventure. “My aim is to produce a first rate mystery for a modern audience while remaining absolutely true to the spirit of the original.”

Although the novel won’t be in book stores until September 2011, you can listen to Horowitz read a passage of his new Sherlock Holmes story on BBC Radio 4.

Endorsed by the “estate” or not, there will only ever be 60 canonical Holmes stories (i.e. those written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself). This book, no matter how good it might be, would be no more an official Holmes story than Guy Richie’s movie (which I liked very much). I hope this story is good, and I plan on reading it, but to me it will always just be a derivative work. (Nothing wrong with that mind you, I’m just kinda irked that just because these people are related to Doyle [and fairly far removed at that] they think they have a right to decide that something is an “official” story.)